


embers

by kalypsobean



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 19:34:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19257775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean





	embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



The last time he saw Mary, all he could see was her face, peering out through the carriage window and moving farther away until all he could see was a blur of dark brown, and then nothing, though he stood there much longer, imagining, waiting.

She had asked him to stay, to take care of things when she couldn't, and he did try; it wasn't the same, and he couldn't seem to do enough to succeed, to stop things turning sour and falling apart, crisis following crisis. His mind would wander, sometimes; he would wonder if she had made the crossing safely, if she had found someone to protect her, if anyone was as loyal as he would have been.

 

He seeks out the Druids not because of the power that he sometimes feels he can almost touch, almost make tangible and twist to his will, nor because he feels more comfortable away from court now that Mary doesn't draw him there, but because he's tired of wondering. 

 

He finds them easily, almost as if they had been waiting for him, and he sees enough familiar faces that for a moment he thinks they may have been; while he had met some travellers while serving as the King's Deputy, there are more whom he recognises simply from around, from settlements and from armies. Some bore the marks of war and seemed distant, almost detached. He would have camped with them, in the shadows, at the edge, but someone took his hand and drew him in towards the fire; it was warm there, where the old stories seemed to almost flow through the air and if he let himself listen he could almost hear his mother's voice on the wind. 

 

In between moments of magic, the ones where he feels he's in the right place, things are very different to what he expected. He did expect to move around; he had known they were nomads, hiding from the Catholics and the Protestants and those who only wanted favour from whichever was more powerful, but he did not expect it to feel so unnatural, so disruptive, as if the earth itself were crying out to him and he had to leave a part of him behind every day they rode on. He almost felt wrung out on those days they rode hard and settled in a new duchy, a new country, for as little as he left behind in the earth and was restored to him as he slept, a part of him always seemed to be out of reach, across the sea, his heart incomplete.

 

He learns very little of the power, of the old ways, for they never rest long enough for the kind of instruction he'd felt drawn towards, that he was so certain he was choosing. He will never be as far seeing as Nostradamus, as sensitive as Delphine; he can bring down his sword with the strength of a mountain, but only because he'd learned out of necessity, out of people's fear of him, of the cloak he wore to hide the rich brocade and twill that marked him apart, for they had little time to even clothe him alike with them.

 

It is when they turned north, moving toward Paris (and Calais and Scotland beyond that), that the dreams come. He doen't remember them at first; he would wake by the embers of a dying fire, covered in sweat but shivering from cold, knowing little more than it happened again. The elders watch him carefully and he pretends not to notice; they see much and spoke little, and he does not wish to risk what small peace he'd earned by asking questions they would not answer. He trusts instead in the soil and the flame, and by the time they reach Auxerre, the dreams had form though the fatigue of bringing them forth weighed him down by midday. When they see the city burning, time slows, giving him a moment when he does not know if it is real, if he is even awake, if he had left at all.

They make camp in a forest, far enough away that the air smells of dew and sap, and he sleeps without interruption, seeing only the same darkness that they flee under, the Huguenots having little patience for the old ways. But now he rides without care for direction; he remembers the roads, the towns, and the dreams don't wait for night.

 

He dreams of Mary, of death and a tower of stone, and he doesn't wait for the elders to give him permission to leave; he stays on the northward road and he follows the path he'd meant to take years before, when he'd supposed his future lay across the sea.

 

~*~

 

Mary looks out over the water. It feels cold and dark and impossibly vast, though she can see the fields on the other side of the loch, so it can't be that far. On clear days, she has even seen people working the crops, has seen them harvest and turn the ground. It had been a silly dream, once, to be the kind of ruler that worked the land alongside her people, part of the country instead of above it, apart from it, but, well, circumstances had put paid to that. Perhaps it had always been impossible, with her gone so long and the growing power of the Protestants curtailing her before she even had the chance to try, as if dealing with men who thought they knew better wasn't enough. But still, she enjoys the simple things she does get to do, excepting embroidery, though she's passable enough now that she's had to become skilled or risk appearing indecent. 

She knows the plan; they've told her where to go when she reaches the other side, and she does quite like the idea of shedding her title completely, or what's left of it now that she's sacrificed even that to keep her country from falling apart. They want her to head east, to where her men, loyal ones, three of the few remaining, wait for her. It rankles, though, being at the mercy of the fidelity of men, when so many have proved themselves fickle or inefficient or easy to buy, or simply interested in something she can no longer provide. 

She pushes from her mind the image of one who isn't there, the most loyal of all who remain and the one whom she'd told, long ago, not to wait; she can't afford now to think of the one she'd sacrificed before she'd known how much else she would lose, not when her life rests on being able to objectively assess who could still be trusted. But he is ever present in her thoughts, as if the very wish that she forget him keeps him close to her heart, and in comparison all of the loyal Scotsmen are found wanting.

 

There is little that reassures her in the days before the appointed time; there are too many secrets and agendas and looks, and these are all thing she knows how to be aware of without giving that knowledge away. She finds herself grateful for all the times Catherine had schemed against her, turning her affections this way and that, for it enables her to all too easily recognise the signs now. The snide comments from Lady Douglas, the furtive bustling of servants, even the care taken with the latest preparations give her cause to wonder, cause to fear.

He would tell her not to concern herself and investigate on his own, but he isn't here; he is safe and she trusts that he still takes care of her second country in a way she could no longer serve her first. Still, it is his voice in her mind that tells her to save some bread, to steal a knife and drag it along the stones of the walls that feel like her prison, to listen at the door and to learn how many steps from the door to the stairs, from the dock to the reeds, and to remember them well. She does not dare to write him, or breathe his name even in the middle of the darkest nights, yet the idea of him is a comfort where little else of warmth exists.

 

On the day, she runs to the south. She's fairly sure the only reason she makes it so far is because someone had betrayed her; nobody would have left so much space for her to pass through if they weren't sure of her plan, and she has, she supposes, become known for having plans that not having one might just be good enough.

 

She does regret that, a little, when she's reduced to sleeping between the roots of a tree, but there she dreams of a forest, of living simply and a warm fire and a house built from logs, a place where the tangles in her hair, the dirt on her apron and the crushed remains of simple food that she'd stashed away and forgotten don't bother her. She dreams that he finds her.

 

~*~

 

It is perhaps a miracle, the last bestowed on Scotland through the intercession of a weakened Rome, or perhaps a coincidence, borne of the determination of two hardy spirits. Perhaps it is simply chance that they meet somewhere between, stumbling on each other in an anonymous forest so far south in Scotland that it could even be in England, or some land between, a land forgotten by nobles so consumed by war that the details of which tree belongs to whom are unnecessary. He keeps her safe and she gives him a home, a purpose and a place to belong, forgotten by a history forged in lies and power that had no further use for them.


End file.
